


Finding You; Finding Me

by Corundum_Creations



Category: Original Work, Path Finder
Genre: A Path Finder Original Story, F/F, Magic, Minor Violence, Plot? We're figuring that out as we go, Tags Subject to Change, no beta we die like people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29393226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corundum_Creations/pseuds/Corundum_Creations
Summary: An Original Path Finder tale."She tensed both in trepidation and an attempt to strengthen her own resolve. The mists, she had braved dozens of times at a very young age for water or medicine. The screams and trees bending, she had always drowned out with her task at hand and the reality that the trees would be tall and straight in the daylight. But now there were no screams. And there was no creaking. And there were no vainly smothered breaths. And there were four walls and dimming light and cold silence and that thing....The house creaked and moaned in the night with the wind. It was a distinctly different sound to that of tall, sky scratching trees bending in blizzards of only air. The magic-sick woman next to her breathed very differently to the haunts of the past. The object in her hands was warm in a different way to the metal handles of leaking buckets. The scents were ripe with herbs and books and incense and magic remnants, there were no air-ridden stains of the sick and dying, and rotting and stagnant. The boards and support beams above her glowed in different shadows of the moon than those blood soaked things of her nightmares."
Kudos: 1





	1. The Object

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first story on here, so here we go!  
> Unfortunately, I can't promise speedy updates or anything because of my health, but I won't abandon this brain child of mine.

Growing up in the Ustulav country side, Onislernius is wary of superstition, religion and magic but isn't foolish enough not to also bear trepidation for the horrors of the land, and dismiss the seeming lunacy of those in the north, below the hordes, in the Immortal Principality. She sees the science of Caliphas and the democracy of Palatines as something that very well could begin to bring Ustalav back to its former glory--or at least a brighter shadow there of.

It can always get worse, she knows this well, but she'll take the could-be-worse times while they last.

She traveled with Prof Lorrimor a while, they'd crossed paths and she'd shown great interest in his research. She was thirteen then. Her family gladly accepted one less mouth to feed and the possibly of a better future for one of their children. And so she'd gone with him and learned and studied by his side. He'd insisted on magic teachings after she'd exhausted his scientific knowledge, insisting that the two subjects cross over.

She had denied it.

Then she'd found a new book. It was by a relatively young author, only the fine print insisting on magic. The symbols had garnered her attention, none were magic signs from what she'd remembered from Lorrimor’s failed lessons with her and resembled the variables of her formulas. She'd bought it with money meant for food. She hadn't even noticed his return after dark with her nose stuck in a book and ink stains on her fingers. When she'd returned to reality some time after, she found a pile of books--magic books--he had gathered for her sitting only somewhat neatly by her notes and candles burning above her head.

Sometime later, after he'd denied her company for an adventure and instead sought that of others in response to which she found yet another tutor for basic self defense--she couldn't and wouldn't trust magic entirely--he had returned some days later with a gift. It was peculiar and bizarre with writings of aresemblance more like crows walking through the blood of the dead in snow.

At first, she'd refused it. It was magic and it was strange and it set the hairs on her neck standing on end and a shiver down her spine. He'd left it in clear view, their other companions, though some coming and going, knowing well not to touch it. She usually glared at it as she passed as if that alone would deter it into submission.

Regrettably, he had left it in somewhat of a meeting space. She was enveloped in her writings of science and magic--an alchemy she sought to make all her own, and had not noticed the gradual withdrawal of people from the great open space. Her now long time friend and mentor had, as ever, bidden her a good night and well wishes whether she always realized it or not. She had not this time and with a shiver down her back had noticed it as the candles dimmed and the area darkened. By now, they were well away from the mist of her childhood nights and roaring of unknown and unseen things, but the lack of companionship struck at her heart.

She tensed both in trepidation and an attempt to strengthen her own resolve. The mists, she had braved dozens of times at a very young age for water or medicine. The screams and trees bending, she had always drowned out with her task at hand and the reality that the trees would be tall and straight in the daylight. But now there were no screams. And there was no creaking. And there were no vainly smothered breaths. And there were four walls and dimming light and cold silence and _that_.

She slowly stood, breaths barely making a sound. Her companions were in different areas, she knew, and they were always dependable to some degree. She also knew that her mentor wouldn't give her anything horrendously dangerous. But even this thing she approached more slowly than the creaking, screaming woods.

It had the shape of what she imagined a bone of those invisible beasts of the night to look like. She almost sighed out a laugh when she remembered that in her childish imaginings, she suspected the trees themselves to be making those sounds; trees haunted by the Whispering Tyrant’s dead slaves.

It was still entirely in the realm of possibilities, however, given what she knew now.

But this, she still did not and perhaps that was part of the reason her feet moved and her blood rushed around her body. It was oddly warm to the touch, entirely unlike the water buckets or medicinal plants of so long ago. It did not warm in her hand, however, it was just... warm. She couldn't liken it to a slowly freezing corpse nor a sun blazed stone nor a newly forged weapon nor a dying ember nor even the magic she occasionally feels when asked to help a friend who leaned heavily upon it.

No.

None of that.

And perhaps that too caused the shiver in her spine. Her hand tightened around it. She'd know. She'd know soon and before her mentor. She would show her competence with this new thing she had avoided for so long and what she still held at arms length. The candles died slowly around her and though she had known a trick to keep them alive for a while longer, it did not cross her mind. And how those scratches seemed to glow in the dusk of the room.

Those damned things.

Symbols.

They had to be. Professor Lorrimor and even his many colleagues agreed when passing in the shadow of it. A necrophile's burrow, they had told her; a piece of a stash the sick bastard had kept. He'd known as much as any other, the thing being written about in a great many passages--at least that's what the scholar who had gone with Professor Lorrimor and had taken ownership of the books declared. Even written about on the stone walls.

She flipped it over in her hand.

It seemed to have drilled yet more insanity with the dead man.

Her eyebrow raised at the memory. And they think _she_ can handle it better than a one hundred and seventeen year old learned scholar.? And even then, it must have something to do with the dead.

She was no necrophile-anything.

The dead can stay dead.

The works of the Whispering Tyrant, she would have no stake in.

She studied again the scrawlings that glowed in the darkness of the room. She looked for the symbols she had been shone when her mentor’s friend had spent a very long time blubbering about the usurped notes.

She saw none. Nor alchemic. Nor other known magic to her. Nor the many alphabets she had studied. Even when mentally overlapping multiple of these options, nothing.

Chicken scratch, she concluded, one insane man's bone to scratch passed to another and another; a long and arduous and pointless thing, stained with all the Magics used to try and unlock its secrets.

She tucked it in a holster on her belt and slipped from the structure to gather herbs.

Out here the moon beamed and the animals sounded and the night was warm. Into the woods she plunged, a thick underbrush forced her to work much harder than needed. She lit a hand ablaze, a simple spell a friend, long since moved on, had taught her.

Still, she was making good time. Her movements were fatigued from her early morning studies and forgetfulness of food, but she had gathered nearly all that she needed. She straightened herself and breathed out the flavored night air, setting scuffed hands on her hips. The light she'd summoned to a hand shouldn't burn, it never did, but her hip suddenly hurt.

Naturally, she jumped at it and stared at said limb in pained disdain.

"Hello," came deep and sudden. She had her defensive dagger pulled but just as quickly, she was on the ground and pinned.

She stared up in abject horror at the sudden turn of events.

"No, no, no," came the deep voice again. It was too far away for it to be owned by whatever held her.

"If you're looking for silver, I have none, just some herbs for sickness in my satchel." She stated plainly, trying to distinguish whatever it was that held her.

"No, we’re are not _thieves_." She blinked at the voice. It was distinctly feminine but harbored something. The deeper voice said something as she stared at the should-be woman holding her.

Then she was suddenly on her feet again.

She barely registered "apologies" through her shocked blinking.

"Again, sorry, she thought there'd be a fight--AGAIN." The deep voice that belonged to a very clearly-male sounded again. He stood in front of her with chiseled chin, neat hairline, shining eyes and a wide smile.

"That is my purpose, naturally, I thought so."

"Forgive her, she is boar-brained." He said, leaning forward and kissing Onislernius’ hand.

"Wha.... what?!"

"What is it? Did she hurt you?!" He was suddenly all too close and doting like a new mother.

She slapped his hands away, "who are you, who summoned you and why?!"

He stared at her and blinked. A clearly irritated sigh came from somewhere beside them, though the exact entity could not be as clearly perceived.

"You did."

She looked where his companion should be, "no?"

"Yes!" He sprung back and bounced while holding her hands, "we've been stuck in that _thing_ for years! Oh, thank you for freeing us! You must be such a magician to do that! Oh, I am forever in your debt.--and you must have slain our master, amazing!" He draped himself on her in his enthusiasm and only then did she notice his nakedness.

“That would indeed be impressive, though I suspect he met his fate long ago.”

"I... no? Wait, so you mean you were both in _this_? As in actually in it? Like some rune keeper's assistant?"

"Not rune keeper. An experiment, we were told after our creation, one that failed, though we were still useful."

She felt as the should-be-woman took the object off her.

"He used me for battle, to make dominion of his neighbors. When he had no more use for me, he turned to my brother whom he used like a lure. He lost himself towards the end and as he died and was cornered, he cursed this. I have not breathed this air for...."

"Oh, and I have not felt the touch of a woman in centuries!" The male whined and seemed to somehow gather the weight of a dead man as he leaned on her.

“So you don’t know of the necro that had you?”

The man suddenly flung his hand to his forehead and twisted himself like a dying snake, nearly rolling off her shoulder, “oh! Is that what he was, I could feel death crawling on my skin. Horrible, I say! Horrible! Dreadful!”

She heard herself sigh in tandem with his sister-being.

“So then you are not in stasis in this thing? It is as if locked in a room for you? Do you know what your creator’s actual intent was?”

The man continued blubbering about something.

“I believe that may be the best analogy, yes. Obviously, we have no need for food or waste control, though we feed off the magic around us. We only know what he continued to whine about; something to rival what his brother had—I imagine he is dead now as well?”

“What’s his name? I do not promise I will know, there is always so much happening in one area of this world; even the scholars have difficulty.”

“Zipf.”

Her bones chilled.

“That’s….”

The man fawned over her again, muttering and declaring things that did not reach her ears.

“The Tyrant’s….” was all she managed.

“Onislernius!” For a moment, she saw the woods of her nightmares and heard the calling of the damned.

For a moment, she thought she was back there.

“Lor-Lorrimor!” She bellowed back, hardly being able to hear her own voice above the rushing in her head.

“Onislernius, child, what have you encountered, I felt a turn,” her mentor, as ever, was not quite straight forward.

“I- I don’t know....”

“Was there anything that happened—did you go out for a fight?”

“No-no, no. I just came to pick medicine for Erola.”

“Oh child,” he soothed with a warm hand to her face, “she overused her magic, it must only come to pass.”

“I know... but perhaps it would make us all feel at least a little better.”

She followed him back to their current inhabitance, feet numb and arms lame. The strange object bounced against the dagger on her hip. If he saw its previous place pointedly vacant and it’s new place on her hip, he left it to the silence.

He paternally chided her for her long waking hours and banished her to bed.

Out of routine, she crept into her shared bed with Erola, unconsciously basking in the warmth the other had made though she did not feel it.

The house creaked and moaned in the night with the wind. It was a distinctly different sound to that of tall, sky scratching trees bending in blizzards of only air. The magic-sick woman next to her breathed very differently to the haunts of the past. The object in her hands was warm in a different way to the metal handles of leaking buckets. The scents were ripe with herbs and books and incense and magic remnants, there were no air-ridden stains of the sick and dying, and rotting and stagnant. The boards and support beams above her glowed in different shadows of the moon than those blood soaked things of her nightmares.


	2. Pharasma's Festival

_Thwump._

She was so pleasantly warm and comfortable that not even the Tyrant himself could raise her.

“I see that you’re awake,” a calm voice sung near her. She sighed and cracked her eyes open.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself if you keep this up.”

“Ah, so then which Erola are you?” She was playfully tapped with a book on the head as her partner added said book to a pile in her arms. The cover, from her one second viewing, had an oddly shiny finish and extremely fanciful writing. “The Curse Oracles Bare,” it read before it disappeared.

She took notice of one spine turned towards her, disjointed from the rest, “Building Your Tolerance to Magic.”

The sun shone gently on Erola’s face, setting alight her eyes and hair. Though her eyes bore deep circles beneath among visibly sickly skin and unkempt hair.

Onislernius’ shoved herself up on the bed, Erola’s eyes flashed.

“And I told you not to sleep with all your things! You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

“I see it’s the tenacious trouble maker,” Onislernius stood in smooth movements and leaned to take the stack of books, ”and _you’re_ gonna hurt yourself if you don’t _rest_.”

They stared at each other during a long silence. Onislernius was tempted to close her eyes against the risen sun.

She finally did and tears dampened her cheeks, “I can make something for you later.”

She set the books down among another stack and acknowledged her gathered herbs hanging neatly across the window beside her satchel with a vaped wave.

“It won’t do-.”

“The placebo-effect, I’m counting on.”

An eyebrow raised on the taller beauty.

“Is that so?”

“Yes, and I’ll bodily put you back into bed so the plants can do something!”

The other maintained her incredulous, yet somehow affectionate, stare. At that, Onislernius pushed herself forward and as opposed to using her combat training, began persuading the other into bed with a failed hug of sorts.

Erola merely let out a snort and gave half hearted attempts at resisting though weakened as she was, it proved not to be much.

Still, they found fun in it. Onislernius gave a panicked, “ack!” when her toe was stubbed against a pile of yet more books.

“All these mages—allllll these mages, and still there is clutter!” Erola announced with a flourish of her free arm, before suddenly bringing it back to herself as Onislernius toppled them both onto the bed.

Onislernius righted herself and stared down at Erola, appreciating the sight of the deep red halo, “all these rooms—allll these rooms and yet we are here like termites to a mound!”

Erola rolled her eyes. Onislernius’ smile faded as she noticed labored breathing.

“Ero....” She touched a hand to the other’s face.

A warm hand came to embrace hers and with a brush of lips to her knuckles came, “I’m fine. Hey, remember that tea you made me in Judd?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. I’ll see what I can do—on the promise that you. Will. Rest.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Erola saluted as Onislernius lifted the other’s legs and did most of the work in getting the other into bed. She returned the knuckle kiss and took her leave. She didn’t notice an unnerved glance toward the object she had held in open distain now swinging about on her hip.

“Bag!” She rhetorically yelled as she spun back into the crowded room.

She paused in her hurried steps down the stairs, around yet more books and passed what was meant to be a family dining area.

In said room, illuminated by the large arching windows, sat Professor Lorrimor and a few others muttering fervently in a language she was no where near fluent in. Yet she loitered and vainly tried to decipher the sounds.

She quickly skittered away before they could catch her listening.

She bounded into the sunlight and jogged with the warm breeze into town with some snatched treats from a windowsill courtesy of a very sleep-deprived house mate that had a leaning towards anything involving flour and yeast. An art they called it, like the magic so many of them practiced and what amazing art it was.

The sounds of smooth melody guided her into the square among otherwise empty streets where there was great merriment.

“Excuse me, I am not familiar with thi—this festival?”

The kindly looking woman acknowledged her, “oh, child, this is the festival of Pharasma, there are larger, of course, in the wealthier towns—but _this_ is the best. Sometimes, she blesses us with her presence and gifts us a large harvest and clutch.”

“Clutch?”

“Oh, yes, hohoho, a town lives only as long as its people, perhaps you can find yourself a husband here; many suitors come from all over. We are beautiful here.”

She thanked the elder for the knowledge and kept her grimace about marriages to herself, weaving around people. She could smell food distinct to other places she had visited with Professor Lorrimor all in one place. Her mouth watered at the glimpses she had of the stalls as she was swept up into the communal dance.

Suddenly, the music and singing stopped, yet they all rushed to a halt at the same instant.

Face red and chest heaving, she stared into the eyes of the person she had ended up facing. A lizard halfling with eyes like molten gold undulating like tea leaves into a stirred cup.

_TEA!_

She nodded her head in what she hoped is a not an entirely rude gesture as she took her leave. Having learned her lesson, she creeped tightly to the stalls as she looked for her prize. Still, the music and foot falls of the dancers thundered in her ears. Colors and shapes and entreating words blurred in her resolution.

Shoulders dropping, she surveyed the last stalls, lonely things away from the ruckus and laughter.

Recognizing particulars from her own land, she found herself at the last stall. It was less colorful than the others. The sign and prices are messily written. Her eyes stung as she studied the assortment; balms, spices, uprooted plants, and seeds. She muttered watery words under her breath.

“Am I missing something, child of Pharasma?” The keeper asked with a clear accent.

“Yes, um….” She swallowed and took three deep but rushed breaths, “Aweguf tea, I am aware it’s more rare, but it would greatly brighten my friend’s day.”

“Not to worry, not to worry,” the keeper clicked her tongue as she disappeared beneath her presented plethora of goods. She reappeared shortly thereafter with a small cloth satchel fitting neatly in her palm.

“Leaves, I do not have, but seeds, I do.”

Her eyes widened, then her brow furrowed, “how much?”

“Three gold.”

“Three go-!” She nearly choked on her own disbelief. A hand fumbled with the strap of her bag. In sum, she should have enough between silver and mostly copper pieces, but that’s a long time saving and meant to send back to her family.

She loved Erola, but....

“I’m sorry, that’s too high for me, thank you though. Please enjoy the festival”

She couldn’t look the woman in the eye as she left, slipping silently through town compared to the uproar at the heart of it. Her eyes hurt. Her knuckles were white. There was a stabbing pain in her abdomen.

The satchel felt heavy and lopsided where it sat quasi thrown over her side and back, the object thumping against the leather sheath of her dagger. The weight nearly brought her down when her leather and wooden shoes skidded across and crunched the packed gravel that served as the city’s storm drains.

She stared her reflection down in the glass, fingers twitching along the vane of a quill that was so, so out of her reach. A stationary. And it was _beautiful_. Her brows furrowed and her satchel strap pulled taught.

_Don’t do it... Don’t do it._

She forced her eyes away but didn’t get as far as bodily turning away when her eyes landed on something else.

_THE LETTERS!_

She was off! Making wrong turns and turning herself around in a city she should have known.

Finally, she was at the mail station. The music and foot falls thumped in her lungs as she hurried to pull the letters to her family from her satchel. A lanky teifling politely accepted the letters from her, the weight of coins carefully wrapped and distributed between them all. Few coins, if they could be called such things, were left. But who needed it when one had hard-won skills of survival and closely knit ties?

“Not part of the festival?”

“I partook some, but I have an ill friend I’m looking after.”

“Oh... by Pharasma, they did send you out here for something, right?! She knows either way—in her way—whether you are for her, but it gives us a lot.”

“That’s just as important,” she supplied in response politely, “and yes, I came out to find something but… I need to earn more….”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Seems two today have the misfortune of not seeing their duty throug--….” His voice tapered off as he leaned to take a better look at her, dragging his eyes up and down, studying her face. She took a small step back.  
  
“Well, it seems I am incorrect!” He turned, smiling broadly, and pulled a very small cloth bag from somewhere beside the window.

“Here,” he presented it to her, “from a friend of mine; we all deserve to be happy today.”  
  
When pressed on the contents, he dismissed it and waved her away. Begrudgingly, she took her leave but inspected the contents as she walked back towards the house, stomping on hope that she was afraid to give wings to.


End file.
